I would like to point out one more thing before I go to work. "Inspired" and "Canonical" are NOT the same thing but they seem to be used interchangeably in the thread. Inspiration is a matter of revelation and faith. God revealed to the Church that He inspired certain works and the Church accepts this by Faith. "Canonical" refers to a writing to be read in Church, to be used as part of the rule of faith, to teach the faith. In the West the books are considered inspired AND canonical. There are a handful of eastern communities (non-catholic ones) who hold some books inspired but not canonical and others which are canonical but not inspired.

example. Some do not read the Apocalypse in Church yet they consider it inspired. Others read the Apostolic Constitutions in Church but do not consider them inspired.

Probably statements like "If it weren't for the Catholic Church, our non-C friends would not have a copy of The Bible!" as stated in the previous message.

It is implied that 'tradition' authoritatively told the world what should be in the Bible.

Not recognized what is already true (by reason) and accepted them into the canon, as the language of the councils seem to indicate...




The teaching authorities within the ecclesia, or body of believers, do help preserve me from error. But again, you would argue that they are not the 'true' church. Yet a 'true' church again appeals to reason, else it loses it's meaning. Oy vey!

Secondly, a scripture reference for this? Having trouble finding it.

Finally, Paul seems to indicate the exact opposite.

Acts 20
28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.a Be shepherds of the church of God,b which he bought with his own blood.
29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.
30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them

And we seem to be glossing over Paul's 'commands' that any 'bishop' be the husband of one wife, and manage his family (1 Timothy 3: 2-4). Or, that in future times some will come with false doctrines, forbidding people to marry (1 Timothy 4:3). But perhaps that's for another discussion...




Should I accept this reasoning, then?






So the ruling at Trent was redundant, then?

Listing books is not the same as having them solidified in the canon.

You do seem to acknowledge the Holy Scriptures were determined by acceptance of the only Christian Church and were defined by that same Church for around 1200 years. It believed them to be the true Word of God, but not by the reasoning of man. It is also true that we accept Christ as Savior through faith, but that is also not by reasoning (emphasis added).

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us about using human reasoning, " Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." Ephasians 2:8-9 also speak to a faith that comes not by man's reason. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." We do not come to faith by the power of human reasoning in the mind, we to come faith by the power of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. The truth is revealed to us by God, not through reason.


How was this authority come by? Given the myriad of various Protestant faiths, which one really has the truth in it?

Again, God and His Church does not appeal to human reasoning, but to revelations of the Holy Spirit.


So the ruling at Trent was redundant, then?

Listing books is not the same as having them solidified in the canon.[/quote]
No, Trent merely reconfirmed the Canon of Holy Scripture had not changed for over a thousand years.

Some questions are still out there for those proclaiming the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. What Church determined the Bible? When did it do that? How did it do it?

Exactly correct. You WOULD NOT have a bible of it were not for the Catholic Church. All you would have is an incomplete Hebrew OT. And Tradition played a prominant role in the acceptance and rejection of various books. If a work did not reflect Tradition it was rejected. The NT books are a crystallization of the Apostolic Tradition. BOTH Scripture and Tradition are the ONE Inspired Word of God.First... BODY OF CHRIST...Not body of believers. The Church is HIS FLESH AND BONE. His BODY. The very one which hung on the Cross. The fact that it is Also a group of people is unrelated to the term "Body of Christ". Your ecclesiology is un-biblical. WHY? next... I agree with Paul. I do not see how he is saying the exact opposite. He is saying what actually happened. How does one tell if the truth has been distorted. How do I know that the Scriptures are being twisted? The teaching does not line up with the Apostolic Preaching, which has been preserved by God in the Church. "This is my covenant with them, says the Lord: My spirit that is in you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your seed, nor out of the mouth of your seed's seed, says the Lord, from henceforth and for ever."

And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors: For the perfecting of the saints, for the word of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Until we all meet into the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ: That henceforth we be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine...

What does the teaching Church do? Perfect the Saints. Edify. Bring Unity of Faith. Prevent one from being swayed by false doctrine.

Only if you look in the mirror. The protestant revolt is an example of the wolves who devour.

Paul is condemning two things here. Polygamy and the gnostics who forbid the joining of man and wife. Marriage and having children was considered an evil act by them. As you well know Matrimony is a Holy Sacrament to us and is encouraged by the Church. There is no reason for you to be disingenuous and pretend you do not know this.

Sure, we should not trust our understanding with regard to our belief in the Lord. I should trust Him no matter what. Again, does Church = God? Certainly not, we are His bride, to be united with Him one day. We are not Him.

Secondly, the phrase 'trust in the Lord with all your heart' presupposes some logic with regard to who or what the Lord is, what trust is, what that means, and so forth. You see, you can't escape reasoning.





Whichever ones have the truth in them. The 'truth' is not subjective, we just have never bothered to have the debate.

I don't like denominations any more than you, and I wish we could unite around the truth.

Truth = that which corresponds to reality. Both the Scripture and the Tradition are supposedly true. Protestants think that they both cannot be true, because they don't correspond to the same reality. So we accept Scripture as true, since it is clearly the word of God, and reject Tradition as infallible, though still a source of truth. This would be 'tradition' instead of 'Tradition.'




I think Jerome, Origen, and other church fathers would disagree with that. The Apocrypha may be inspired on some level, may be useful for some devotion, but the whether they were the word of God or not was not decided until the 1500's, according to church history as I've read it.

You're still getting hung up on this church or that church. In the book of Revelations Jesus addresses several different 'churches' with different messages. You will likely respond that these are just congregations, not different churches, but the language is right there. And Jesus strangely does not just tell each church to follow Rome, which is rather telling.

As I've said before, I am not a strict 'Sola Scripturian.' I believe that the Bible is the word of God based on belief in the early church's clear apostolic authority (as confirmed by miracles and direct experience with the Lord) and the writings that come from such hands.

I trust the early church's reasoning abilities and the working of the Holy Spirit to confirm such books as canon. This is different than saying I must then trust everything the this group of men, and any group of men they nominate as successors, say from that point forward as on par with the word of God.

An important point is that I accept that the collection of books may be fallible, but the writings we have collected are infallible.

See I would argue that it was the Spirit of the Lord combined with reasoning from revealed truth. Not some special power of 'the Church.' Indeed, some of Paul's letters have been lost forever so it seems not an 'infallible' collection of infallible books.

And I would agree that Scripture is a crystallization of apostolic tradition and teachings. The Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. This does not then mean that any tradition that comes from the church is on equal footing. That's an entirely different claim.





Well, I have the Greek translation right here and church means 'congregation.' It always refers to a group of people, of believers, in the NT. Certainly it is also His body, but this does not argue as to what constitutes 'oneness' in body.

I think that those who proclaim the central tenets of the Christian faith, that first century knowledge, are part of the church. The early disciples likely had no well-developed understanding of Trinitarian doctrine, transubstantiation, the roman church, and so forth. Certainly the thief on the cross did not. Yet all were saved. So what unites?

We are saved by grace through faith. And such faith is evidenced by works of righteousness, and fruit of the Spirit.

I think that's all. The rest is important theology, but does not necessarily define the 'church.'




He is saying this to leaders in the church at that time. That some will come amongst THEM and distort the truth. You ask the right question. How do you know that Scripture is being twisted?

This passage seems to show that this notion of 'tradition' being infallible simply does not hold water. Clearly some leaders in the church would mislead. A RC in that 'pew,' with your line of reasoning, would be lead down wrong paths because they believed that tradition was on par with the word of God. How would they know if Scripture were being twisted if they believed that their leader had an infallible interpretation? They would not.


So we are back to one standard of truth. The Word of God. I has to be Scripture, because it clearly cannot be tradition.




Yes. 'faith in the knowledge of the Son of God. Until we ALL reach such knowledge.' Not just bishops and church leaders. And it's interesting that you equate that God gave certain people these gifts with the notion that these people are necessarily in the Roman Catholic Church. Because that's nowhere in the text.

But I would agree with the rest of your exegesis...the church does do this. But does it do it infallibly, as the word of God? It seems not, else Paul would not appeal to a standard of truth that we all can know so that we are not lead astray.

Earlier in that passage "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." So who needs to drop their arms and allow peace? Has the Protestant church anathemetized anyone in the last millenium? I don't mean to attack, I actually love how the RCC has developed in it's acceptance of other 'separated brethren' since the middle ages. I think we are on the right path. It just makes reconciliation difficult when one side won't budge an inch. Like the Democrats and Republicans on the budget.





Well, 1 Timothy 4 is with regard to future times, and gnosticism was already rampant. So it's probably not that. And I was really focusing more on the fact that the RCC forbids their priests and bishops specifically from marrying, even though Paul makes that an assumed condition of being a bishop in 1 Timothy 3, and associates such practices with the doctrine of demons in 1 Timothy 4.
Certainly Paul also writes that singleness is is a gift of the Spirit, but there is a distinction between recognizing a gift and prohibiting marriage.

Of course the Roman Catholic Church has a high regard for marriage amongst the laity, they do a great job of defending marriage, actually.

A quick addendum here...

I often hear that tradition created Scripture, so therefore tradition is the same as scripture or is on par with it. But again the Word of God militates against this :

Hebrews 2
1We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.
2For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment,
3how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.
4God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

This is why there is a distinction between apostolic tradition and RC apostolic tradition. God confirmed the message miraculously in the early church. He does not seem to do so in further church councils and so forth...

OK, it seem that some have a problem seening the obvious.

Christ was talking to Peter (the first Pope) the head of The Church (and the only Church)which Christ founded in 33 AD: "And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon Earth, it shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon Earth shall be loosed also in Heaven." Matt. 16:19; 18"18.

What part of this don't you understand?

Also: "He that heareth you (The Catholic Church), heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despisets Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me." Luke 10:16 To hear The Church is to hear God.

What part of this don't you understand?

Also: "...And if he will not hear The Church (the Catholic Church), let him be to theee as the heathen and publican." Matt. 18:17

What Part of this don't you understand?

Again - Catholics were informed in the 4th Century by the Catholic Church which writings would be included in the New Testatment (including all the Books - even those which n-C have reject ed). Again She was guided by the Holy Ghost in this and had the Power to "bind and loose" (see above). Issue ended - now we all know what makes up Holy Scripture. Therefore we would not have The Bible as it Is today, if The Catholic Church had not given It to us.

What part of this don't you understand?

Also: "As also in all epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also other Scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Pet. 3:16

What part of this don't you understand? Only The Catholic Church has the Authority to tell us what the various passages in Holy Scripture mean.

God Bless and Pray for the Gift of Faith. Only The Catholic Church has the complete Truth given to us by God and the Seven Sacraments which are the main conduits for Sanctifying Grace needed for Salvation and Heaven.

Bruno

The part where 'binding and loosing' equates somehow to 'you and all your successors will always infallibly teach truth.' That part.

And the part where Jesus gives the same power to the other disciples as well.

Also, with message from Paul like below:

1 Corinthians 3
3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
4For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

And later in the passage:

21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours,
22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours,
23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Kind of a scating indictment, really. Without Cephas, the whole notion of 'true church' is kind of out the window, I think?





The part where Jesus mentions the Catholic Church and is not addressing a small group of disciples about to go out and preach in a specific instance in time.





The part where this passage has anything to do with theological doctrine. This is about someone sinning against another.





The New Testament canon was established yes, but is that the Apocrypha? That's Old. And it was not canonized until about 1600 years after they were written, and under odd circumstances.

Again, the power to bind and loose is not necessarily the power to be infallible in all decisions that are made. If so, we would not receive so many warnings about false teachers.

What is a false teacher, in your view? Someone who is outside the church and teaching?

What, then is true teaching? Someone inside the church?





Next verses:
17Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position.
18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever!

To 'err' is to assume truth. In response to this Peter does not admonish us to listen to the 'Church,' but to grow in our own knowledge and grace of our Lord.




I have been. Unfortunately I just can't make odds or ends of this notion of the Church having the 'truth' if the Church only speaks the truth. To be a 'true' church assumes a standard over and above the church. Yet you are claiming that this is the church also...

What part don't YOU understand?

The part where 'binding and loosing' equates somehow to 'you and all your successors will always infallibly teach truth.' That part.

And the part where Jesus gives the same power to the other disciples as well.

Also, with message from Paul like below:

1 Corinthians 3
3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
4For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

And later in the passage:

21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours,
22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours,
23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Kind of a scating indictment, really. Without Cephas, the whole notion of 'true church' is kind of out the window, I think?





The part where Jesus mentions the Catholic Church...and is not addressing a small group of disciples about to go out and preach in a specific instance in time.

It's funny how 'church' means small group of believers or the Roman Catholic Church, with all of it's accretions, depending on what doctrine that is being proved.




The part where this passage has anything to do with theological doctrine. This is about someone sinning against another. Certainly this makes sense that the church should make decisions about clear-cut sin.

But is it a sin, for instance, to say, believe that Jesus is only spiritually present, or sacramentally present in the Eucharist? The RCC seems to think so, for I am anathema because of it. Not to get into a Eucharist discussion, you can see my thread on 'Eucharistic questions' under 'the Lyceum.' But you see my point, I hope.





The New Testament canon was established yes, but is that the Apocrypha? That's Old. And it was not canonized until about 1600 years after they were written, and under odd circumstances.

Again, the power to bind and loose is not necessarily the power to be infallible in all decisions that are made. If so, we would not receive so many warnings about false teachers.

What is a false teacher, in your view? Someone who is outside the church and teaching?

What, then is true teaching? Someone inside the church?





Next verses:
17Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position.
18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever!

To 'err' is to assume truth. In response to this Peter does not admonish us to listen to the 'Church,' but to grow in our own knowledge and grace of our Lord.




I have been. Unfortunately I just can't make odds or ends of this notion of the Church having the 'truth' if the Church only speaks the truth. To be a 'true' church assumes a standard over and above the church. Yet you are claiming that this is the church also...

What part don't YOU understand?

Fair enough. Perhaps I'll have time to respond later.

God Bless,

Bruno

Of course the Church Jesus established is no the same thing a God (Father, Son & Holy Spirit) and I certainly didn't make such a claim.


Sorry, you cannot reason your way to faith, nor by the power of reasoning accept by faith the Canon of Holy Scriptures are the Word of God.


A classic ducking of a straightforward question. Either you don't want to say who established the Bible, when it was done and how it was done, or maybe you just don't know.


I'm now very confused as to what you think you believe. You defend Sola Scriptura, but don't fully believe in it. Your posts have devolved to circular arguments.

I want to address the issue of Trent and the Canon of Scripture, because I don't think it has been fully addressed yet.

You have an erroneous picture of what it means when the Church decides infallibly on a matter of doctrine. When it came to the canon, the canon had been set and re-affirmed by those early Church Councils. What Trent did was re-affirm it infallibly. What it basically does is say this is the canon of Scripture as held by the Church. No one may add nor take away from it.

When the Church infallibly defines doctrine, it is not because it was never taught or promulgated, but because there is now someone coming out teaching other than what the Church teaches. In other words, heresy is now being spread. In the case of the canon of Scripture, heretics such as Luther and Calvin were spreading the erroneous idea that 7 books that the Church looked upon (and had for over 1,000 years) were not really inspired. (Talk about doctrine of men!) Funnily enough, your authority for your canon is these men - roughly 1000 years after the Bible was first compiled. You cannot point to the Early Church Fathers and say "there! there is my authority" because you do not hold the entirety of their beliefs, and because you ignore the simple fact that even in their teachings they submitted to a higher Authority - that of the Church. Furthermore, in the case of St. Jerome, if you read all his writings and his arguments, you would see that a great many times he quotes from the deuterocanonicals as Scripture. For books he supposedly considered uncanonical and uninspired, he sure spent a lot of time with them.

I'll give you an example. Just in letter 108 to Eustochium written in 404 AD, he quotes from Wisdom twice:



and from Sirach comes this and you'll notice he calls it Scripture:



While the earlier Councils may not have solemnly and infallibly defined the canon, their promulgation of what books were to be included in the Bible still carried the weight of the Authority of the Church behind them and as such were to be submitted to. If you care to research, you may find (as you have) that at the time of those councils there may have been discussion on the matter, but once decided you are hard-pressed to find writings of Popes and leaders of the Church disagreeing with it in the following 1000 years or so - until the Protestant Revolution.

As far as Jerome and other Church Fathers go, even they submitted to the Church and Her Authority on the matter. And the teachings of the Church Fathers must be looked at in the over-arching teaching as a whole of all the ECFs and the Church. They cannot be cherry-picked like so many Protestants do with the Bible when it comes to doctrine.

So that was just a poor Scripture choice then. Understood.




And you cannot have faith without reason. What is faith? What does it mean to have it? What is the true church? And so forth...



I answered it fine, the true churches are the ones with the truth in them. How can you claim that the Catholic Church is true? You have yet to answer this...

The church did not 'establish' the Bible, God did, let's not have an overinflated view of ourselves. The Church simply recognized that which was true. That certain books belonged and others did not.

How were the books decided upon? Divine revelation, argument, casting lots?




In my initial post I addressed my view on 'Sola Scriptura.' Not the strawman, caricatured version of the argument put forth by some Catholics, but a belief in 'only the word of God.' I think that exists in the Bible, not in the Church since the middle ages.

Of course, we don't want to forget the Council of Laodicia which affirmed the absence of the Apocrypha, and pre-dated all of the councils you listed. But it doesn't matter, because all of these councils were not ecumenical, which means they were local only. Not universally binding. And therefore not 'Catholic doctrine,' I would say.

And let's not forget that Luther also submitted himself to the authority of the church initially. He was not a rabble-rouser, he was questioning Tetzel's selling of indulgences, not trying to create a new church. So we can't act like many of the ECF's questioning of these books is somehow pious and wonderful until the evil Luther and Calvin questioned them even more. That's just not being fair. If they were in question then they were in question. That's all.

The Jews, whom we trust for most of the Old Testament, did not seem to want to include these books (Josephus nor Philo), strangely enough, either. So it doesn't seem cut and dried.

So again I wonder. Why did it take 1500 years for the church to affirm these Old Testament books officially, when the New Testament was agreed upon almost 1000 years before?





Understood. But since we are examining a historical question, it is best to look at the earliest sources...

Funny you go to the Jews who decided centuries AFTER Christ died and rose again that those books because they were not written in Hebrew did not belong to their "canon", but do not trust those Jews who FOLLOWED Christ and used those books as Scripture.

Me, I would much rather go to the Church that has existed since Christ instituted it for the Authority on what Scripture should be than the Jews.

The Jews do not hold to the New Testament as being inspired nor Scriptural. Perhaps you should throw that out too since you think they are infallible in their discernment of what Scripture is.



Funny how you accuse me of holding up the ECFs as pious and wonderful when all I did was point out that St. Jerome, whom you yourself brought up, quoted from the deuterocanonicals and indeed referred to them as Scripture. When all I did was point out that they did what any good Christian should do, that they submitted to the Authority of the Church. All I did is question why you follow the canon of a man 1500 years after Christ, and after more than 1000 years of Christian thought on Scripture.

Of course, in actuality it is much worse than that. For Luther still included the deuterocanonicals in his Bible, because he thought they still profited reading, even if he considered them uninspired. It was a Bible society in the 1800s who removed them completely from the Protestant Bibles.

You may look up to Luther and Calvin. I don't. They were heretics. They had no authority whatsoever to do what they did. Luther was a rabble-rouser. He left the Church and he persuaded others to join him in his heresies. He may not have initially been trying to create a new "church" but he most assuredly did and never reconciled with the Church but instead continued to speak out against Her and to continue to pull others out of Her.

He was no different than other laity or religious who decide for themselves that they know better than the Church and become their own popes. And when they persuade others to leave the Church, to leave the Church founded by Christ and thus lead them into peridition, they are following evil.

Except the Council of Laodicia was not affirming what was to be considered to be inspired Scripture and did not condemn any books as Apocrypha. They were listing what should be read in church - including Baruch - which you don't have.

At that point in time the universality of Scriptures amongst the churches were not set. Some read from the Shepherd of Hermas, something no Bible has. Some read from the Protoevangelism of James, again something no Bible has. This council was the first stepping stone into discerning which books should be included as canon so that ALL the churches had the same Scriptures.

So again, you are cherry-picking, this time with the Councils. If this Council really was your Authority on what Scripture should be, then you should be pulling the Apocalypse of John (otherwise known as Revelation) out of your Book, as the Council did not list it either.

But the biggest dichotomy on the Protestant accusations (albeit largely unseen by the Protestants themselves) about the deuterocanonicals is that they rely upon the Authority of the Church completely and unequivocably when it comes to the New Testament.

The first Ecumenical council to compile the list of 73 books of the Bible was the Council of Florence in 1441.

The Council of Trent affirmed the Council of Florence's list.

Hm, I did not know that.

Were they both equally infallibible proclamations? Because it seems redundant. Thanks!

Evidence for the claim that the early Christians used these books as sacred Scripture? On par with, say, the writings of the apostles or the prophets?

I would rather go through the Church as well, and history seems to tell us that there were differing opinions in the Church until the Middle ages, also that the Jews in the 1st century did not accept the Apocrypha as sacred scripture (Josephus, a 1st century HISTORIAN, for instance). So it would seem that those closest to the events surrounding these books were not sure about them as being on par with Scripture.

Why should we accept Genesis, for instance? Because the RCC tells us to, or because the Jews can attest to who wrote what and when?





Didn't mean to put words in your mouth, it just seemed a difference of attitude regarding Jerome vs Luther. And how do you know that they submitted, given that they were dead long before these books were declared canon?

Sure, I would agree that parts of these books may be good for reading. But that is different than being Scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore inerrant in what it teaches.

Look, I am not Luther cheerleader, he had some zany views, and I wish there hadn't been a schism. But he did not present himself with the bull of excommunication, so we can't accuse him of 'splitting off' to create his own church. He tried to debate the church at the time, but they wouldn't entertain his arguments. So he was kicked out.

If he wanted to keep practicing his faith, what was he then to do? This was a monk who lived the Church! Just throw his conscience out the window and agree with such perceived as unscriptural teachings as justification by a treasury of merit in penance? Again, that may be another thread, but my point is that Luther did what I think any convicted Christian would have to do, whether we think he was right or wrong...




I am not the only one 'cherry picking.' You argue that earlier councils affirm these books, when I present an earlier one that does not, then we shift to saying that the canon was not set. That was my argument.

I do not claim that councils are my absolute authority, that's the point. It's simply historical evidence. Which books were written by eyewitnesses, which books were written by prophets, and so forth?

Let me ask you. Do you think anyone discussed or argued over which books should be included amidst these councils? If so, what did they debate about? Who had a greater' Tradition...? Who had more of a connection with God?

When you can answer that you will know one of the bases of the 'authority' by which I recognize the Biblical canon.

David, we are headed into the weekend which is my busy time for work, so I may not be able to post answers to your last post until Sun/Mon. Just thought I would let you know, because I am interested in our discussion!